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To be truly in love with someone is not a generous act, it is the most supremely selfish act. It is about wanting the object of our affection with all of our heart, soul, body, and Spirit. We don’t woo them for them, we woo them for us, because more than our own life, we want their life, and we want them in our life at any cost! This is something about which Ayn Rand was correct. She called it the “Virtues of Selfishness.” There were and are problems with her understanding of how it works, but she made a very important point.
The point here is that Jesus not only knows us as we are, but He knows us as we are going to be in the pure light of His love. He is able to see us in that light now. About the best we can do for now is wander around in our failings, frustrations, weaknesses, selfishness, ugliness, flaws, meanness, nastiness, etc. – a lot of etc – all the stuff that defeats us in living out of our faith every day. This is all the stuff that drives us to the cross, every day and all day long.
While Jesus already knows all about all this garbage, it fades into insignificance in the light of the rest of how He sees us. To him we are altogether beautiful – we are HOT – divinely HOT in the highest and best sense of the expression. He can’t help Himself, He is just head over heals in love with us to the point of His own destruction, Isaiah 52:14. This is how He wants us to know how love is, and this is the love He wants us to know that He has for us. It is a REVELATION! It is a revelation that we cannot refuse. It is living in this revelation that grows the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. It is because He wants us that much!!! Faith in it’s highest form and power agrees with His assessment! Jesus is not a squanderer. He was the only SEED his Father had, and that Seed was meant to be spent on purchasing the only thing His Father was and is hoping for: You and me. We simply cannot refuse! We simply can’t fritter away His Love for us. This is not about Jesus’ generosity, It is about Jesus and His Father getting what they are after: You!
Love!
For more on this subject, see previous post: “My Time Has Not Yet Come”
I missed this blog in January! Of things I would love to do, on a scale from 1-10….picking your brain, Jay, on this subject would come very near the top.
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I have experienced this jealous love of our Father often. There is just this knowing that, in His time, He will move heaven and earth to show us that love. While we were led through many valleys of man’s own religions, how often He has torn us away from the jaws of the wolves by the urging of His Spirit. And He used those experiences to show us how unfaithful that “marriage” would be to a “religious and worldly husband”.
Or take those personal relationships that subtly tried to win our affections away from Him. Or those tempting engagements in things of the world we thought would be harmless enjoyment. Or the times of silence when we just settled for anything to do. The list goes on and on!
As Jay stated, “This is all the stuff that drives us to the cross, every day and all day long.”
Jay says again, “He can’t help Himself, He is just head over heals in love with us to the point of His own destruction.” Jesus suffers the ‘wayward and unfaithful wife’ in each and every one of us that the Father chose before time, while we grow stubbornly into His pure and spotless bride. He doesn’t just witness our failings from above. He suffers them because His Spirit lives in each one of us! Now that is a love unmatched! And only that kind of intimacy can bring about that kind of pure and righteous jealousy.
If I may add, this brings light to what James says: “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, ‘He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us.’?” (James 4:4, 5 ESV)